The Oregon Ducks (8-0) are the consensus No. 1 team in the country, and there really hasn’t been much of an argument against that with the amount of upsets of top seeded teams that we have seen already. The Ducks have been one of the only ones to avoid such a loss, so even if you think Georgia or Texas is better, Oregon deserves to be ranked where they are right now until they suffer a bad loss. This weekend, they will have a chance to do just that when they take on the corpse of Michigan (5-3) football.
Make no mistake, the Wolverines are a terrible football team in 2024. They won the National Championship just last season, and then lost pretty much their entire roster to the NFL, including their starting quarterback and head coach. They are sitting at 5-3 through the first nine weeks of the season, but none of their victories are particularly impressive, and their losses have been embarrassing for a program of their calibur. Michigan has gone through multiple QBs already, having benched starter Davis Warren after a few weeks, going to Alex Orji, and then benching him for Jack Tuttle. Now, Tuttle has decided to retire due to injury, and they are back to Warren.
It’s a mess, which makes this a real trap game for Oregon. Going into Michigan as a large favorite, this is typically a spot where the Ducks really need to be on their toes. The good news for them is that they usually are under head coach Dan Lanning, who has thrived in this spot since taking over the team. As a double-digit road favorite, Lanning’s Ducks have gone 8-0 straight up and 7-1 against the spread. They have avoided the upset to this point, and even have covered the spread outside of one game.
This is certainly going to be much more of a test for Oregon than most people think. Covering a -14.5 spread on the road is not going to be easy, and I’ll be quite honest, the Ducks are due for a letdown game. If you take a look at the betting splits here, they certainly don’t favor them, which can be a very ominous sign that this is indeed a trap game for the No. 1 team in the nation.
A whopping 76% of the handle is on Oregon -14.5 in this one over at DraftKings, including 83% of all spread tickets. On the moneyline, it is also overwhelmingly in favor of the Ducks, with tons of moneyline parlays including them to win the game. Whenever this is the case, the underdog becomes one of the biggest needs for the sportsbook. Believe me, you never want to be on the opposite side of that, as a majority of the time you are going to lose.
Still, it is quite hard to ignore how much success that Lanning has had coaching this team as a huge road favorite. Perhaps he is one of the few coaches that actually realizes that this is a true trap game for his team, and he makes sure they take it very seriously. They will need to, or they will end up with their first loss after this weekend.
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